Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation

designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life.

Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of

history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example,

and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visit Dailystoic.com. Older, but never wiser.

There is no wisdom without experience, but experience doesn't necessarily translate into wisdom,

does it?

We've all met people who refuse to learn life's lessons.

We've all met people who remain remarkably naive

and immature despite their age. We've all met people who, to borrow an expression Churchill used

to describe one of his enemies, when they managed to stumble over truth, pick themselves up and

carry on as if nothing had happened. The ancients believed that suffering led to wisdom, except, of course, when it didn't.

And what prevented this acquisition?

Inattention, entitlement, complacency, ego.

It's impossible to learn that which you think you already know, Epictita said.

We have two ears and one mouth for a reason, Zeno reminded his students.

Procrastination, too, we tell ourselves.

We'll get to stuff later.

You are an old man, Mark Srealis admonished himself in meditations.

Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses,

to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future. Look, it would be wonderful if we could just count on wisdom happening. Unfortunately, like all things worthwhile, it only comes from work, deliberate, intentional day-to-day work. It is, like the other virtues, not a noun, but a verb. It is something you are doing. Wisdom takes work. It always has,

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